Patients frequently require treatment by multiple medical professionals working as a team. For example, a patient may require treatment or a surgery that requires coordination between a cardiologist, multiple surgeons, and multiple nurse practitioners. Additionally, for many intensive surgeries, such as Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement (TAVR), there are stringent guidelines and requirements that must be met before the operation can be performed.
TAVR is a procedure for select patients with severe symptomatic aortic stenosis (narrowing of the aortic valve opening) who are not candidates for traditional open chest surgery or are high-risk operable candidates. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) require extensive documentation for the patient to qualify for the surgery. Additionally a cardiovascular team is required to perform the implant and must document all patient implants. Furthermore, expensive data acquisition post implantation is required to be submitted to the Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS) and the American College of Cardiology (ACC) Trans-catheter Valve Therapy (TVT) registry.
As a result, communication and coordination between members of a medical team regarding a particular patient is of paramount importance. Additionally, documentation of all information relating to the patient and communications between members of the medical team treating the patient is necessary to comply with requirements.
Current patient tracking systems focus only on patient records which are network based and which store only the medical history for the patient. There is currently no way to track the progress of a patient through a screening and referral process which involves multiple member medical teams. Additionally, there is currently no way to document, share, and communicate information regarding patient treatment in real-time among members of a medical team.